A Shadow of the Past

Star Sanses, Unite!

A few weeks passed, and Blueberry got settled in. He got his own room, which was nice, but he didn't spend a lot of time in it. There was way more to do in the rest of the castle. For one thing, there was the living room with its assortment of consoles, board games, and card games. For another, there was a training arena far down the hall past the living room. Dust had given Blueberry a grand tour of the place, minus Nightmare's garden, because he'd dust them if they trampled his flowers.

Yeah, he's got a thing for flowers.

Just walking in the main entrance of the castle, there were two flights of stairs in a U shape leading to the second floor balcony, below which were large doors leading to the "throne room." Nightmare spent his afternoons reading in the gigantic, dark room when he wasn't busy breaking humans' grips on AUs. As Dust was explaining this, a thought struck Blueberry. "There are no windows, so how does Nightmare read in the dark?"

"Simple," Nightmare walked in from a side door that led to what Blueberry glimpsed was a library. He stepped up to his throne, sat down and, with a quick but elegant wave of his hand, flames swirled around his fingertips. Blueberry stared in awe, his eyelights bright as stars, as the flames danced around and eventually settled above Nightmare's left shoulder. "There, perfect!"

"That's so cool! How did you ever learn fire magic??!!" Blueberry asked.

Nightmare growled in annoyance. "It's not 'fire magic.' It's a technique called fire bending that has nothing to do with magic. It's manipulation of nature itself."
(I view magic as monster-type specific. For example, skeleton monsters can use bone attacks, while other monsters cannot. This would prevent one type of monster from learning a different type of monster's magical abilities. Another good example of this would be Toriel and Asgore's magic. They are both goat monsters, and they both use fire in their attacks. Thus, my point. So, it would technically make it impossible for Nightmare to learn "fire magic." Unless, it wasn't magic. >:3)

"Oh, oops," Blueberry scratched the back of his skull in embarrassment.

"Well, the more you know." Nightmare had settled down with his book while Dust and Blueberry had continued the tour.

Back to the present, Blueberry had begun to notice Error was acting... off. He was restless and easily angered, so everyone avoided him. All except Blueberry, who wanted to find out what was putting Error on edge.

"Are you ok, Error?" Blueberry cautiously questioned.

"Y-yEaH, iT- uH, i'm FiNe...." Error couldn't help but be nervous. Ink hadn't created anything since... Underswap. Could he be...? Was he...? No! No, no. That's ridiculous. He couldn't have. Nah, this was just one of Ink's slower..... Weeks? Why was he not creating?

Meanwhile, in the Doodlesphere....

Ink paced around until he was dizzy. Where was Error? Nobody Ink has asked has seen him, and Dream hasn't sensed any trace of his emotions. No matter how hard they searched, they couldn't find him. Ink wanted him to be alive; it wouldn't feel right to wish he was dead. Of course, he did wish Error would just stop destroying his creations! It saddened and annoyed him that Error destroyed AUs, especially the new ones, seemingly without reason.

He also didn't like the fact he was worried for his enemy's safety.

Was Error doing this to torture him? Tch, that sounds like him. And Ink can't even get angry enough with the destroyer to really wish any harm on him. Mostly because that would bring him down to Error's level. But, there was a teeny, tiny voice in his head telling him it was for a more, ah, personal reason. Was he falling for Error?